Freedom Line Blog

Updating yesterday’s comment on the Verizon landline employee strike, in which the union up and walked away from negotiations, picketing workers are now alleged to have vandalized company equipment.  Strikers have also openly admitted stalking and harassing other Verizon workers during service calls.  According to striking technician Richard Aulicino of CWA Local 1109, “We cannot stop them from doing their job, but we can harass them while they are on the job.”

Stay classy, union thugs.  Sounds like a guy who truly cares about his trade or his job.

And some people wonder what could go wrong with proposed card-check legislation, which would eliminate the secret ballot in union elections and allow union representatives to stalk employees even at home?

Kudos to Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) for vetoing a state version of “card-check,” a shift in policy that would replace the secret ballot with signing a card given to union organizers.  For those needing confirmation that eliminating the secret ballot is one of the last gasps of a dwindling union movement, the good folks at Western Farm Press report this little nugget:

Farmers lobbied mightily to turn back the legislation and convince Brown to veto it. The veto was a victory that ranks close to the triumph several years back when the taxes on farm equipment and agricultural fuel were rescinded due to a herculean lobbying effort. Passage of the card-check law would have created heightened union organizing efforts by a floundering United Farm Workers of America.

And how’s this for a bit of history:

The 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act gave wings to the United Farm Workers of America, which eventually reach 100,000 members. However, that number has plummeted to less than 20,000 today. The card-check rule would have breathed new life into the UFW.

Other unions like the Teamsters came in to challenge UFW, and growers simply increased wages and benefits to stave off unionization. UFW became unnecessary.

And so is card-check.  Good veto, Governor Brown.  Keep ‘em coming.

Here’s more proof the Obama Administration is bent on destroying the sovereignty of states.  The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is threatening to sue South Dakota, Utah, South Carolina, and, of course, Arizona, unless their attorneys general say new state laws protecting secret ballots for union elections are unconstitutional.

The NLRB construes its enabling legislation to allow employees to unionize if a majority signs cards stating that desire.  That process is called “card check” and allows union organizers to bypass secret ballots that protect the identities of those who don’t want the union.  All four states passed laws last November 2^nd to guarantee workers in their borders of the right to a secret ballot.  Now, the NLRB says those laws conflict with current federal law, even though card check has not passed into legislation because it’s overwhelmingly opposed in Congress.

In effect, the pro-union forces running the NRLB are trying to do through administrative fiat what they can’t get passed through the legislative process.  Unless each state’s attorney general agrees with the NRLB in writing that the new law is unconstitutional, the NRLB will sue the states in federal court.  This is the same strategy the Obama Justice Department is using to challenge Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law Senate Bill 1070.

But tortured legal arguments can’t trump common sense:

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he believes the state is on solid ground. He plans to coordinate a response with the other three states.

“If they want to bring a lawsuit, then bring it,” Shurtleff said. “We believe that a secret ballot is as fundamental a right as any American has had since the beginning of this country. We want to protect the constitutional rights of our citizens.”

What’s next in Obamaland?  Test oaths?

H/T: Associated Press

If union representatives treat each other thuggishly, just imagine how they’d behave outside the homes of skeptical employees under card-check legislation.  Consider the words of Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers co-founder, as reported in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal commentary entitled “California’s Union Shakedown”:

Dolores Huerta, a co-founder of United Farm Workers and a historic labor figure in California, published an ‘open letter’ to [SEIU leader Mary Kay] Henry on the Huffington Post that accuses the SEIU of intimidating Kaiser workers.  Saying that she visited four Kaiser hospitals to talk to workers about the NUHW, Ms. Huerta wrote that at each, ‘SEIU staff surrounded them and began chanting and yelling insults, refusing to let workers talk.’  Ms. Huerta called on the SEIU to put ‘an end to a mistaken campaign of aggression.'”

Under the so-called Employee Free Choice Act – which remains on the legislative wish list of Big Labor, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama – union campaign reps would have access to employees at their homes, supermarkets and elsewhere.  If union agents treated Ms. Huerta, one of their own, that way, just imagine how thuggish they might behave at the home addresses of reluctant employees.  Yet another illustration of the need to maintain the democratic secret ballot during union elections, rather than allow union leaders to eliminate it via card-check.

After watching and listening to the John Fund segment below, ask yourself when it becomes appropriate for many of the Democrats to be impeached for the way they’re systematically destroying the legislative process.

All politically/financially/culturally destructive things must end, and so it is that the chief of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU), Andy Stern, will be stepping down soon.  Ostensibly, it’s because he helped shepherd comprehensive health care “reform” into law, one of his key legislative goals.  But as the New York Times points out, he didn’t achieve passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (aka “card check”), which eliminates the secret ballot in unionization elections.  Hard to believe that after 14 years at the helm, Captain Ahab Stern is jumping ship before landing the biggest prize for organized labor.  Could it be he’s being groomed for bigger things than a radical, labor version of a community organizer?

The fraudulently-labeled Employee “Free Choice” Act (EFCA) is one of the most dangerous legislative proposals since Barack Obama assumed office.

EFCA would literally eliminate the sacred democratic secret ballot during union elections, which has caused overwhelming majorities of Americans to oppose this scheme.  It would also do such things as allow federal arbitrators to dictate wages and work rules upon employers and organized employees for the first time.  During this period of economic difficulty, with Big Labor already causing American jobs to disappear or move overseas, now is hardly the time to make employment even more difficult in this country.

Fortunately, EFCA appears temporarily stalled in Congress.  But that isn’t preventing the Obama Administration, Harry Reid, Big Labor and liberal activists from seeking alternative ways of imposing EFCA and its toxic job-killing provisions upon the American economy.

Namely, Obama has nominated radical union activist Craig Becker to serve on the five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to achieve their goal.  As Stewart Acuff of the Utility Workers Union of America has baldly stated, “if we aren’t able to to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, we will work with President Obama and Vice-President Biden and their appointees to the National Labor Relations Board to change the rules governing formation of a union through administrative action.”

And you thought ObamaCare was the only thing liberals were going to try to force down America’s throat against our will?

Please contact your Senators immediately (locate your Senators’ contact information here) and demand that they support the Senate filibuster against Craig Becker.  Otherwise, EFCA may soon become a reality despite our successful efforts so far to stop it in Congress.   The American economy and everyday workers will otherwise pay the price.

Over on National Review, Stephen Spruiell gives an in-depth look at how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is helping President Barack Obama remake America into a much more liberal place, one piece of legislation at a time. The excerpts below offer a powerful wake-up call to anyone thinking that the stimulus bill, health care reform, and card-check are anything other than massive redistributions of wealth.

On getting a union-friendly stimulus bill:

The stimulus bill was a top priority for SEIU because it contained massive bailouts for state governments and Medicaid. As mentioned above, states such as California, New York, and New Jersey have expanded their social-welfare systems beyond what they can afford, in response to pressures from SEIU and other public-sector unions. At the same time, their progressive income-tax structures have made them especially vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles. When the credit bubble burst, these states were looking at massive deficits, layoffs, furloughs, and budget cuts. The stimulus bill included a $50 billion slush fund for state governments and $90 billion in Medicaid expansions, helping the states avoid a necessary round of belt-tightening and tax reform.”

A bit surprisingly, California came in for particularly rough treatment:

The most illustrative example of SEIU’s clout during this process came when the Obama administration threatened to withhold stimulus funds from the state of California if it went ahead with a planned reduction in payments to home health-care workers. The administration set up a conference call with state officials to discuss whether the cuts violated the terms of the stimulus, and state officials were surprised to learn that the administration had invited SEIU representatives to join the call. “This was really atypical and outside any norm I am familiar with,” California secretary of health and human services Kim Belshe told the Los Angeles Times. The administration backed down from the threat, but only after the story had leaked and caused significant blowback.”

On getting a union-friendly health care reform bill:

SEIU has poured millions into a group called Health Care for America Now, which has dispatched envoys to deliver portable pavilions, professionally printed placards, and uniform attire at almost every major health-care protest this year. Dennis Rivera sent hundreds of union activists to meetings this summer in an attempt to counteract opposition to the Democrats’ bill. “We’re running this campaign like this was a presidential campaign, and our candidate is health-care reform,” Rivera told the New York Times. Why does SEIU care so much about health-care reform? The subsidies and mandates in Democrats’ legislation would drive up demand for health-care services, meaning more revenue for hospitals, more health-care workers, and more members for SEIU.

The creation of a government-run insurance plan is an especially important priority for the SEIU. “The nexus between government and private industry would give SEIU a toehold to organize more workers,” explains J. Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts. Once the public option is in place, SEIU can pressure the bureaucracy to implement union-friendly policies. For example, the public option “might only reimburse hospitals that are unionized or have a neutrality position toward unions,” Wilson says.

And finally, supporting card-check legislation:

As important as the Democrats’ health-care plan is to SEIU, the union’s top priority remains the Employee Free Choice Act, otherwise known as the card-check bill. Under SEIU’s preferred version of the bill, employers would have to recognize a union once a majority of its employees had signed petition cards. This process would allow union organizers to identify holdouts and pressure them into signing up. The bill would also require business owners to allow union organizers to hold meetings with employees on the business’s property, while forbidding the owners to hold mandatory meetings to discuss unionization.

Finally, the bill includes a binding-arbitration provision that would allow the NLRB to impose a union contract on a business if negotiations with its union broke down. SEIU loves this provision, because Obama just named one of its lawyers, Craig Becker, to the NLRB. Businesses negotiating with the SEIU would have two choices: accept SEIU’s demands voluntarily or have the SEIU-friendly NLRB accept them for you.”

You can read the entire article here.

At a luncheon meeting this week with Harry Reid and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, the Majority Leader suggested that the Senate would not be voting on the the dubiously-named “Employee Free Choice Act” any time soon.  According to Reid:

We have too many other things on our plate.

The news spread quickly throughout the policy community yesterday.  And despite some having done so already, it is way too premature to start claiming victory on this issue.

Make no mistake… Card Check will rear its ugly head once again.